[oom] you don't need to save me, but would you run away with me? // Part 2

[from_the_outside]

It's a long, long week. 

All the weeks here are long. She's been exhausted since she first arrived, and it hasn't gotten any easier – she's just gotten used to it.

What she isn't used to is watching what it does to Bucky.

He keeps busy, vanishing shortly after breakfast and not reappearing until well after dark, sometimes not until close to midnight. That doesn't mean she doesn't have eyes on him – she has eyes everywhere in this city. Some of what he gets up to he tells her about. Some of it she sees or hears about.

Some she only pieces together after the fact.

For example:

Four days into his stay she sees a flurry of alerts and messages about a gang of thugs that had decided to tangle with him in a Lowtown market. The videos of him throwing them into plate glass windows and walls and storefront doors travel through Madripoor like wildfire.

And then there are the rumors. It's public knowledge he killed Cade and that he's been seen with the art dealer: what no one knows is why, and the whispers grow steadily more frenetic as the week rolls on. The general consensus seems to be that the art dealer had Cade disposed of in order to help her own climb to power. More than one person attempts to contract him for help with an unsolvable problem. No one manages to hire him. No one seems to know what he wants.

Worse is that as the power dynamic between those on the lower rung vying for Selby's position fluctuates, he deliberately allows himself to be seen more often, delves more deeply into Madripoor's seedy shadows. She doesn't understand until her security catches a would-be assassin she saw coming a mile away, and then she realizes: his involvement with her, with Cade, has painted a target on her back.

So he's decided to paint a larger one on his own.

He loses weight. She pushes breakfast and dinner at him, but he eats mechanically, hardly seems to notice. The lines drawn on his face seem carved into rock. He stops smiling except occasionally when they're alone in the middle of the night, or when his phone pings with a text from Sam.

On the fifth night, he stops sleeping. 

He wakes up from a nightmare he refuses to talk about, and for the next few days she doesn't see him sleep at all. He's catching catnaps like he used to back in the Winter Soldier days, she thinks, but she's not sure. Every day he's a little quieter, a little more grim.

Which is why it's so strange that her apartment is completely filled with flowers.

Everywhere she looks now, there they are: large, expensive bouquets in fancy vases on nearly every available surface. He's had one delivered every single day, and every day she hates herself a little more for bringing him here. Every day he tells her come home with me.

Every day she tells him I can't. And he looks at her with those determined, weary eyes, and her heart breaks a little more.

It's a little over a week after he'd first arrived that she's hosting clients again. The party hasn't even started, and she already wishes she had a drink.

(There weren't any flowers today. She wonders if that's a sign.)

Comments

[from_the_outside]

She's luckier than she knew at first, she realizes as she looks at the row of bodies. Of the fifteen invitees, six – due to age or asthma or a handful of other respiratory issues – had succumbed right away. Three more, already on the way to the hospital, are unlikely to make it. The rest are in much the same shape as her: coughing and dizzy, varying degrees of ill, but nowhere near death's door.

Mateo is one of them. Fenec... is not.

The egg has disappeared into the secure vault beneath the gallery and her security force is busy securing the area. "Find out how he did this," she orders her chief. "Now."

"You need a doctor, too," Mateo tells her, and she shakes her head, clearing her throat. "I have someone on the way," she lies, and he nods. She points out two of her guards, directs them to Mateo and the others left. "Get them to the hospital," she tells them. "Safely."

She has work to do.

[nerves_of_ice]

The driver lies collapsed and unconscious over the steering wheel. In the back seat, Anders is screaming.

Bucky punches through the rear window with his left hand and yanks the shrieking Anders through it and into the air, holding him by the throat as he gasps for breath and scrabbles at the implacable metal hand.

"Your target," he demands, harsh and flat.

"Esparza!" Anders cries, without even the slightest resistance. "Him, and Fenec - they would have killed me if I didn't kill them first, oh my god, it was self-defense really, please--"

Bucky stares at him, and knows that Anders sees his own death in his eyes. "The others?"

"Collateral damage! I just, they just--" He's lying, and he doesn't get the chance to do more of it. His hand closes on his throat until Anders is choking, then unconscious and limp.

Bucky drops him to the ground and rips open the trunk of the car. The emergency blanket he finds there will do.

[from_the_outside]

Her guards escort Mateo and the others out, and she turns to her chief.

"Get me the camera footage," she tells him. "Now."

* * * * *

Mateo Esparza, sometimes called Snowy Owl, sometimes wishes he'd never come to this hellhole of a city in the first place.

Tonight, as he swallows carefully past his tender throat and tries to catch his breath, is definitely one of those times.

He loads the other survivors into his town car and is about to get in himself when he sees something that makes him pause: a grim, grotesquely hunchbacked figure striding out of the dark. Or, no –

He squints. It's the Winter Soldier, heading back to the gallery with what is almost certainly a blanket-wrapped body slung over his shoulder.

Mateo meets the man's eyes and tries to control the shiver that runs through him at the expression in them. It seems Anders hadn't gotten all that far after all.

[nerves_of_ice]

He changes direction and walks up to Esparza without breaking stride.

"You were his target." His tone is flat and cold as ice. "You and Fenec. Everyone else was just a bonus for him."

He dumps the shrouded body at Mateo's feet in a limp pile. It groans.

[from_the_outside]

Mateo watches him carefully but without outward sign of fear. "I knew he would come for us, but to attack so many..."

He shakes his head. The warmth in his eyes has utterly dissipated. He heads around the car to open the trunk, then stands back and tips his head at it. "Please. I will take it from here."

And, after a second: "Thank you for your assistance."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky hauls Anders up from the pavement and dumps him into the trunk with casual ease, then steps back and nods to him.

His glance flicks briefly to the interior of the town car, taking note of everyone in it, then back to Mateo.

[from_the_outside]

"Soldier," says Mateo, by way of farewell, and nods back before getting into the car and speaking a quiet word to the driver.

As they pull away, he's already considering his next moves.

* * * * *

She can't believe that Anders, of all people, managed to pull this off, but as she watches the security footage, she has to admit he'd done a masterful job. It hadn't been a grenade or control of the vents: it was a simple tablet that he'd dropped into his glass of soda water.

She watches the replay of the fumes billowing from the glass and grimaces. Even if Anders is out of the picture, he got that tablet from somewhere. "Find out what that is and figure out how he got it," she tells her chief, then heads over to the bar to dig out a few aspirin and a glass of water.

Her head – not to mention her throat and chest – hurts like hell.

[nerves_of_ice]

He stalks through the door while his stomach writhes in knots, and breathes a quiet sigh of relief when he sees Sharon on her feet. Bucky scans the room, then walks over to join her.

"Did you see a doctor?" He manages to keep his voice both quiet and level.

[from_the_outside]

"Not yet," she tells him, and gulps at her water. Her voice is scratchy, but otherwise level, and the shakiness is mostly gone from her legs. "I have a... private physician who still makes house calls. She'll be here soon. I just sent the rest of them off."

But it's a few miles to the hospital, and it would take hours to get through triage there, and she...

She wasn't willing to go without him. Or not to be here when he got back. She clears her throat and coughs into a closed hand, then looks up at him. "Anders?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Dealt with," Bucky tells her. Absently, he wipes his left hand against his jeans. "Mateo was the target. And Fenec. Everyone else was collateral damage."

There's something dark and weary in his glance, there and gone.

"She's on the way? Soon, you said?"

[from_the_outside]

"Yes," she promises. True, her security chief had been the one to call, not her, but she's still on the way. The how hardly matters.

The motion of his left hand draws her glance, and she looks back up at him, studying his face, then nods.

"I analyzed the security video. He had some kind of tablet, it reacted with the soda water he was drinking."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Huh," he says. "Wonder what it was and where he got it."

He watches her very carefully.

"Are you done here?"

[from_the_outside]

"My team is on it now," she tells him, something furious simmering beneath her exhaustion, but at his question she takes a deep breath – out of habit, except this time it leads to a cascade of coughs that don't stop until her eyes are watering and her lungs feel scraped raw.

"Yes," she admits, glancing around the room. "I'm done."

The doctor can see her upstairs. She's been there before.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Go upstairs," Bucky tells her. "I'll meet you there in a few minutes."

He holds her glance, willing her not to argue with him.

[from_the_outside]

She meets his gaze and holds it, then nods.

"See you in a bit," she tells him, and makes for the stairs. It'll be a longer climb than usual, but she can make it fine.

As she settles onto the couch up in the penthouse, her phone vibrates:

Doctor arrived. Sending up.

Good, she thinks. Hopefully this won't take long.

[nerves_of_ice]

He watches as the doctor is escorted in and allowed upstairs. The look he gives the security chief is enough. "Trustworthy," the man tells him. "She's the one who comes here every time. The boss pays her enough to keep her loyalty."

Every time. He can feel his teeth grinding, and just lets it happen. He jerks his head in a sharp nod, and the two of them start going through the security protocols together.

Once he feels it's likely that they're safe enough for the night, at least, Bucky goes out through the door, past the team that's working on repairing the shattered windows under security's eye, and into the Hightown streets.

It takes him a while to find what he's looking for, but not too long. In about fifteen minutes, he's back and heading upstairs.

[from_the_outside]

The doctor is a no-nonsense woman with all the personality and bedside manner of a cinder block, but she's quick and efficient and she's patched Sharon up from worse. She checks Sharon's vitals and gives her a shot of some anti-toxin, then sticks her on the couch with a mask and some oxygen and instructions to lie there and breathe deeply and slowly for the next fifteen minutes.

"Any long-term effects I should be worried about?" Sharon asks, and she shrugs.

"Give me a call if any show up," she says, and departs, leaving Sharon lying on the couch trying to figure out how to breathe slowly and deeply when all she wants to do is get up and pace.

[nerves_of_ice]

The doctor's gone by now, he knows, as the security chief had mentioned it when he came in. He knocks anyway to give Sharon warning before he opens the door, closing and locking it behind him with his right hand with automatic, thoughtless care.

His left hand is hidden behind his back as he starts into the room. She's lying on the couch, and he crosses toward her with a tired, wry smile.

"Hey," he says, softly, and pulls the bouquet of flowers from behind his back as he draws near. The street vendor had only had a few arrangements, all clearly designed for late-night impulse purchases, but it'd been far, far better than nothing. The bouquet has a few slightly-bruised roses and tulips and some things he doesn't know, with a bunch of greenery around it all, but they're fresh and brightly colored and hopefully the gesture alone will mean something.

"I didn't want you to think I forgot."

[from_the_outside]

She's set the mask and oxygen aside and has just focused on the breathing part, and by the time he comes in and locks the door behind him, she feels like she's pretty much gotten it down. Enough that she can push herself up towards sitting as he comes in, which means that she's precisely the right height to be eye level with the small, slightly sad bouquet he presents.

So she can see it clearly. She sees the crinkled plastic wrap around the stems, the lightly bruised roses, a tulip or two whose petals have simply given up the ghost and fallen off; the baby's breath and green fronds of something she can't identify.

(She sees drops of dried blood on his hand and chunks of shattered glass caught in the rumpled sleeve of his jacket.)

Reaching slowly out, she draws the bouquet into her hands and lifts it to her face to breathe in its scent: the roses are nearly overpowering, and rose has never been her favorite scent anyway, but it doesn't matter.

He brought her flowers.

He's chased her to Madripoor, refused to leave. Killed a man. Sank willingly into the lowest dregs of this filthy world. He hasn't slept or properly eaten for days. He just chased a murderer who tried to kill every damn person in the gallery.

And he brought her flowers, because at his core there is something bright and beautiful and good and she knows, she knows, as her eyes burn and tears begin to drop onto this simple, sweet bouquet, that Madripoor will do its best to smother it.

And she, God help her: she is not willing to sacrifice him. "Okay," she says, finally, after a long, long moment. Her voice is thick and her throat is sore now for a totally different reason. "You win."

She looks up at him, finally, her eyes bright and swimming with tears. "Let's go home."

[nerves_of_ice]

Absolute shock spears through him, rooting him in place, and he stares at her as though he can't believe what he's hearing.

It's because he can't. It's so unexpected, so out of the blue, that he can't take it in; can't absorb it, can't fathom it.

Slowly, Bucky drops to his knees beside the couch, in front of her, and reaches out with his right hand to touch her cheek, feather-soft.

His fingers are trembling.

"Angel," he whispers, throat aching. "Baby, do you mean it?"

[from_the_outside]

Her laughs comes out as a sob, catching in her chest, and she turns her face into his hand to kiss his palm before she looks back at him with wet eyes and a shaky smile. "I mean it," she tells him.

She's known it since he got here, hasn't she? This is the only way to save him. He won't leave. Madripoor is killing him. So she can't stay.

She doesn't know how they'll manage it, how they'll sneak her in, what she'll do about her cover, about Madripoor, about the Power Broker... But the look in his eyes banishes every single thought except one.

They're going home.

"I mean it."

[nerves_of_ice]

He snatches her into his arms and clutches her to him, holding her tight. It's not just his fingers that are trembling now, but his whole body.

"Sharon, Sharon, baby, you won't regret it, I promise you won't, I'll make sure of it--"

Each word is thick and rough with emotion.

[from_the_outside]

He pulls her against him with the force of magnet snapping into place, and she goes without argument, without protest. She only wraps her arms around him, the bouquet still clutched in one hand, and presses her face into his neck as she pushes herself to the edge of the couch cushion so she can hold him as close as she can.

"I know," she tells him, muffled into his skin and his collar, and the tears are flowing fast and thick now, even as something in her chest cracks and turns over and begins to warm itself for the first time in six years. She laughs thickly and lifts her head to look at him, stroking his face with her free hand. "I could never regret choosing to be with you. My sweetheart."

She smiles at him, soft and aching. "I love you. Let's go home."

[nerves_of_ice]

Her tears are hot against his neck, and he cradles her closer still, as close as he can like this.

"Don't cry, baby, Sharon, please--" He realizes he's on the verge of tears himself, and chokes back a laugh as he leans in to kiss her. "I love you too. Oh god, I love you so much. We're going home. I'm taking you home."

[from_the_outside]

She hiccups another laugh and kisses him back before she has to pull away and wipe at her face and her nose with her sleeve. "It's okay," she assures him. "It's because I'm so happy."

Happy. When was the last time she was happy. She thinks of wide fields and a calm lake and a little hut full of the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.

And him. Always him.

It's like she hit a switch and that beautiful, good, golden core of him suddenly expansed like a dying star, flooded through him like a spotlight. She can hardly look at him now, he's shining so brightly.

God, she loves him so much she thinks her heart will break from it. "Yes, we are. Yes, you are."

She runs a fond thumb over his cheek. "We have to figure out how and what to do, but yes, baby. Yes. We're going home."